1. Field
The present invention relates to a method of describing relationships of cause/effect or abstract/detail between segments of a video stream for effectively browsing the video stream and a method of effectively browsing the video.
2. Background
Owing to the developments of a digital video technology as well as of recognition technologies of image or video, users can now easily search, get access to and browse a desired video or a particular segment of a video. The users can even search the abstracted texts of a video, thereby effectively understanding the entire contents of a video in a short period of time.
There are two methods of abstracting the entire contents of a video. One is a story board-like method of using a key frame. The other is a method of using an abstract stream (highlight).
The method of providing a user with an abstract stream on a video by using a key frame has a limit in its practical applicability. To be specific, providing an excessively small number of key frames makes it difficult for the user to understand the overall video stream and to shift to a desired scene. On the other hand, providing an excessively large number of key frames is likely to undermine the storage space or browsing speed.
To overcome these problems, diverse approaches have been attempted. One of the examples is to hierarchically decompose a video stream and express the same. Another example is to provide a user interface, i.e., to provide a scene transition graph for describing a temporal relationship among scenes so as to easily browse a desired scene only by shifting to the desired scene.
While providing a merit of enabling an effective browsing of a video through description of a temporal relationship among scenes, the scene transition graph fails to provide an effective navigation between segments by using associate meanings between the segments since it provides a shift to a segment only based on temporal relationship.